365 days of SL, day 134

In the absence of specific other plans, I took a look at my older landmarks last night to see if there was anything in there that caught my eye — and indeed, several sounded interesting; the one that most stood out to me simply said "12-Jan-2011 - Abandoned Land - PLANE". We decided to go there (it turned out to be located in the northwestern part of Satori), but while it was empty, it wasn't abandoned anymore, and there were no planes there, either.

(no subject)

Good question — I'm really not sure, to be honest. I've heard people take it as evidence of that, but I'm a little more cautious myself; I'm not sure to which extent SL is really in decline in the first place.

One could argue that a high amount of abandoned land is evidence of a lack of a healthy ecosystem, but I don't know how high 8.8 to 9.8% are, in absolute terms. In fact, I'm not even really sure a higher amount of abandoned land is always in itself evidence of that; presumably there's a certain sweet spot, a range of amounts that indicate the turn-over you'd expect, with both (significantly) lesser and higher amounts indicating that something is wrong.

Then there is the question of why the amount of abandoned land increased; I really don't know anything about this side of SL, but I could imagine that the introduction of Linden Homes for premium residents a while ago has had an effect on the rate.

Another interesting question would be how long land stays abandoned, on average, how quickly it's auctioned (or sold directly), and so on; and it'd be interesting how many parcels there are that stay abandoned for significantly longer than the average, and whether there's any areas where these are clustered. Those would be spots where SL needs attention, and I'd expect that the Lindens have infrastructure in place to monitor this and develop those areas.